Musical Fire Alarms with Arduino - Back to the Future Theme
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- You are watching a bunch of old fire alarms play the Back to the Future theme by Alan Silvestri.
Yep, actual fire alarms playing music.
First, a disclaimer: I did my best to try to read and understand the Fair Use Doctrine that is part of US Copyright Law and I do believe this qualifies….I hope. I am in no way attempting to infringe on anyone’s intellectual rights and this is very much a tribute to some of my favorite movie and TV themes of the modern age. (UA-cam’s explanation of how it handles Fair Use needs some work….my opinion.)
Now on to the nerdy details....
This is a project I have been working on intermittently for a couple years now...and it is very much a work in progress but I decided at this point it works adequately enough to show anyone who’s interested in such things. This description will contain a brief overview covering what I think are the important points but I welcome any and all comments and questions!
A few details/notes that should help you make sense of what you are seeing:
There is no trickery here - the sounds are being produced by the actual electronics in each fire alarm horn/strobe for the most part.
The strobes have been replaced by white LEDs that are directly connected to the signal input so they are on whenever that horn is on. (I would have loved to be able to sync the actual strobes with the music but that is simply beyond my self-taught electronics knowledge….maybe someday…)
For simplicity’s sake the best way to explain what’s happening is that I have “hijacked” the circuit that actually produces the frequency to make the fire alarm sound and injected my own via a microcontroller and software.
A combination of open source software,very precise timing, an extremely fast microcontroller ( that costs less than 30 bucks!), a MIDI file, a lot of hot glue, and some very tedious trial-and-error programming results in the music you are hearing.
As of now, the bell, chime, and the electromechanical horn are not used - they require a lot more experimentation and learning on my part before they will...the goal is to use them to add “percussion” and better lower end notes to the music.
There is no “volume” - in other words...no dynamics, no ‘loud and soft’ tones...just buzzy square-wave tones. The software is capable of volume - I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet….mainly because it’s got to be done using precice mathematical timing and advanced programming techniques... and it is extremely complex.
Getting the bell and chime to work correctly is also quite challenging and is as of yet beyond my ability…
The music is produced directly from MIDI files - for anyone who doesn’t know what they are , they are basically files that contain instructions for electronic instruments to reproduce music. Note frequency, length, instrument time, and timing are encoded in these files and can produce beautiful music on the right hardware.
This entire project is made almost entirely of old junk - the fire alarms themselves came out of working systems that were replaced (I do fire alarm/CCTV/Security work for a living so I have access to a lot of this stuff which often ends up in dumpsters…)
Last - and most important - this simply would not have been possible for me to undertake without some basic framework from which to work and adapt - and thanks to a clever gentleman who goes by @Sammy1Am, I have that framework available to me. He wrote some software called Moppy2 which is intended to be used to make music with old computer floppy drives and he graciously shared it with the Internet so makers...nerds... like myself could use it to make our own projects.
Here are links to his Github, UA-cam Channel, and my favorite example of his floppy drive music in action:
github.com/Sam...
• Video
• Stars and Stripes Fore...
If my calculations are correct, when those babies hit 88 dB, you're gonna hear some serious shit....
98*
Haha 88DB its gonna blow up 😂
Ah!!! This is so cool! Great job with the project! It sounds great :)
Thank you!
Imagine hearing the Evangelion opening (A Cruel Angel's Thesis) on a fire alarm horn set.
Hmm... I might have to add that one 😊
How this is what we needed
How hard was it to replace the xenon strobes with the led’s?
This was cool!! Have fun!! ...
Awesome video :D
Glad you liked it, thanks!
This is so sick! Are you still collecting fire alarms?
ghosts 1 1 by nine inch nails would sound cool on those . nice rig!
Love the 2903!
Wow nice
Cool the wheelock mt with the gentex strobe on it cool
HOLY SHIT WOW
Cool
If the fire alarm at my school sounded like that I would dance to it
How about Bowser's Castle from SMB1?
Is this harder than it looks
Eh, it's all relative I guess. If you know how Arduino and similar microcontrollers work..basic programming easily learned by experimentation and UA-cam. And maybe some pretty basic electronics understanding... It's not too complicated.
I think the Wheelock MTs seem to be the horn strobes of choice for these types of projects if you do a search for fire alarms play super mario bros theme you'll find some one by a firefighter/fire alarm inspector his channel is Brettman and I forgot the numbers that came after it he did it with Wheelock Mts but he used the original strobes I believe but I don't believe they are in sync not sure.
That was me.
@@brettman273 yeah I just couldn't remember the numbers after your name btw whatve you been up to haven't seen any videos for awhile.
How did u do that with the strobes
Hi, how are the strobes going steady but aren’t flashing?
I removed the strobes and replaced them with white LEDs. It was beyond my ability to synchronize the existing strobe circuits to the music although I'm sure it's technically possible.
How did you get them to do this!?
Extremely oversimplified explanation: bypass the built-in circuit that makes the noise and inject your own via Arduino. Basically, turn on and off and the correct rate and it produces the correct note.
So cool
Thanks, glad you like it!
There’s a jc penny near me that has auto all xylotone chimes in it, I’ve been trying to find the panel but I can’t, the building is attached to a mall so god knows where it might be
It's possible a mall anchor store like that has it's own system separate from the mall it's attached to. I don't see many Autocall panels around here so I know very little about them.
@@brettman273 possibly, there’s hardly any stores left in the mall, including JC penny, so unfortunately i can’t go in that particular store because it’s vacant and the doors are locked.
Holy shit
nice!
how did the strobe be not flashing
what alarms are used in this video
They are made by Wheelock. I think the model is W something 24...Im not sure. I used that specific unit for a few specific reasons: They have large Piezo horns so they resonate nicely, and the circuit boards were easy to trace and figure out so I could inject my signal into the right place. Basically find the right transistor that's driving the piezo, and blast your signal directly into it's base resistor.
how did you run the strobes without breaking it
Strobes are removed, replaced with white LEDs.
ok sure beats me playing “FNF mods be like” on an unmodified ddr soft pad
Well looks like your up to the same thing that i am with Gentex SHG-24's
How did you do that with the strobe lights !!! That’s awesome
They are actually white LEDs, I spent some time trying to figure out how to sync the original strobes but it's just beyond my ability, especially without schematics. The LEDs are tied directly to the pins making the sound, so they're actually flashing a the same frequency as the notes.
I see a rare Wheelock mt that has a red sleeve
Electric guitar alarm cover 1:00
Do meme songs like coffin dance or distracted
I'll buy it for 5k I'm not joking
Back To The Future Only For Gameboy Color!!!!!
LSM/Older Gentex Strobes dosen't have synchronization built into them. The Wheelock NS Does. You'll have to figure this out through wheelock's DSM/SM. If you want to pull this off for wheeolck Devices. I think SLM Strobes have sychnronization put in them but the LSM have a potentiometer to adjust the flashrate speed on the strobe. Would not recommend pulling this off as that might be alot of work to try
I looked into this, tried to find some schematics and datasheets but a lot of it is patented and proprietary; the patents only have basic schematics without detail in mist cases. I'm sure it's possible to simulate the sync signal, it's just a bit beyond my ability. It's also unlikely that it would reliably show in a video as there would be no reference sync with video frame rate.
There's a pattern it uses. A relay click on the Wheelock's sync module send pluses to Wheelock's strobe to start it's sync protocols, there is a video that explains this and if you can somewhat figure that out, you might be able to pull it off but only downside is it only syncs with Wheelock products
Too bad it's phone quality. I'm sure it would sound even better without phone speakers.
It's pretty harsh and buzzy no matter how it's recorded, but I have since purchased a real camera and plan on revisiting this project this fall...
The strobes are fake
That is correct. That fact is addressed in the video description, but thanks so much for pointing it out.